Tag Archives: handmade

My son is obsessed with stranger things. he watched the series twice in a two week span. We had some pretty scorching hot days here the past week or so, so indoor activities it was! We were searching around on the internet for some perler bead ideas and came across something like these and just started sorting the colors and making these come to life. Is it just me, or is sorting all those colors pretty theraputic? Can’t wait for the new season to start oct 27!

I transformed this black hoodie into an umbreon hoodie from pokemon. I dont really have clear directions on how to do it since I kind of just watched various videos and looked at other hoodies online and sort of just figured it out myself, but this is a run down of what I did.

First i cut all the pieces out. I cut the ears (black and yellow), the circle for the top of the head (yellow), the eyes (red), the eyeball slits (black), and tail (yellow and black – Not pictured)

I first pinned and sewed the eyes to the front part of the hood. Then did the same for the circle that goes on the top of the hood in the center. The ears I cut in half, and then added the yellow stripe in the middle. I sewed all three pieces together. Then sewed the ears together, turned right side out and stuffed with stuffing. I figured out where they would live on the hood and cut a slit in the hood, then put the bottom of the ear through the slit and sewed it up. I did the same for the other ear as well, and pretty much the same thing for the tail. I didnt stuff the tail though, so it doesnt get in the way when you sit.

There are some you tube tutorials that show some of this in better detail. I didnt have any patterns, i just kind of winged it. Its far from perfect, but it made my little guy happy.

I found this post on pinterest and knew that as soon as milo saw it he was going to be ALL about making these. The fun thing was, after we figured out how to do the first one, he was able to make the second one almost all by himself. So they are really easy for kids to complete. He needed two, so that they can have a battle. He wants to make one in every color!

Heres what you need:

Pipe cleaners

Colored drinking straws

Plastic pony beads

Wooden beads for the heads

Scissors

Glue

Sharpies or markers

here are the steps, but i definitely reccomend checking out the original post for photos of how to do it!

1. Twist 3 pipe cleaners together in the middle so they are kind of like a star shape. Make sure that you do at least a couple of complete twists, or the pipe cleaners won’t stay together.

2. Slide 3 pony beads over both of the legs together.

3. Cut a drinking straw into 8 1″ segments. Slide two segments onto each arm. Slide two segments onto each leg with a pony bead in the middle of the leg segments.

4. Twist the extra pipe cleaner into hands and feet. For the hands, I made one loop for the “hand” and a smaller loop for a thumb. Then I wrapped the excess around the wrist to help keep the straws from sliding off. For the feet, I just made one loop and then wrapped the excess around the ankle.

Step 5: Draw a face on a wooden bead and slide it over the top two pipe cleaners. Twist the two pipe cleaners a few times, cutting it off, and putting a little Tacky Glue on the pipe cleaner ends to keep them from untwisting.

Ok, I’m back at the bottle brush tree making. After finding these trees at menards for such a good deal ($1.49 for the big ones, $.74 for the medium sized and $.74 for a pack of two small ones) I knew I had to give this a try. Plus my mantle needed a few more trees….right?

1. Make sure you are wearing gloves and clothes that you dont mind if they get dirty/ruined! Fill your bucket with about 3 cups water, 1 cup bleach. Dip your trees in there and give them a good swishing until the color strips off. Be mindful of how long you leave it in there, the bleach will eat away the brush bristles on your tree. This should only take a few minutes. Rinse the bleach off your trees.

2. Prepare your dye. I used about 2-3 cups hot water and about half the package of dye. Dip your trees in for as little or long as you’d like. Let them dry, and then I used a bottle brush to actually “comb” my bristles back into place.

What do you think? Overkill, or just want the mantel needed?
Found original tutorial here.

Every year I try to make an ornament with milo for our tree, and one that he can give to his grandmothers as gifts as well. This year we made these little snowman tree, using popsicle sticks, foam pieces and a photo from this year.

You need there popsicle sticks for each ornament.I cut one in half for the sides of the frame.

Have your child paint the sticks white. Add glitter if you’d like. While they are drying – Cut out all your foam pieces. I cut out two mittens, two boots, a head and a hat. Have your child draw a face on the snowman. We just used marker to do this.

Glue your sticks together, then add the foam pieces. Cut a piece of foam a little larger than the size of the frame. Using elmers glue, Glue the photo to the square foam piece, and then glue this whole piece to the back of the popsicle stick frame.

I finished my second quilt! Again, this one was made with scraps on hand. And it was really fun to make. This one sewed up ALOT quicker b/c 1.) it was baby sized and 2.) the rectangles are all different sizes, some of them long. I really want to make more of this one! I loved how it turned out and I think it would be nuetral enough for a boy or a girl. I would definitely like to try making one like this a little bit bigger too.
Im happy to report that NO needles were broken in the making of this quilt. This time around, things went MUCH smoother, so that means i learned alot from my last quilt.
However, i definitely could use some more help in the binding area. I made my binding 3 inches this time and that helped significantly, but i dont understand when machine binding, how you are able to sew into the ditch on one side and capture the binding neatly in the back. I have to sew the back and then my binding is all over the place on the front. Thank goodness for transparent thread, but i would definitely like to figure the trick to this….Theres no way im handsewing this binding on! There has to be a way!

This is the pattern I used to make this quilt. It was so easy to follow – so now i just have to figure out how to make it larger! would love to make this adult sized!

Ok, so I’ve never finished my granny square blanket. Im not giving up on it – no way – I just do more crocheting in the winter when I hibernate in the house and watch alot of movies. Summer leaves me wanting to sew for some reason. I was looking at some new projects to take on, but the thought of buying more fabric gives me anxiety. I wanted to do something to use up the fabric stash i have, so I had the idea to make a quilt. I started sorting my fabric and notice I had alot of blue, brown, green and grey type of stuff so I went with those. Alot of it is leftover scrap fabric. Decided to go with 3 1/2 in squares; updated my rotary blade, bought a long acrylic ruler and went to town on cutting squares. This is made up of fabric scraps from previous projects, old sheets, old shirts, old pants and new fabric. I thought I would make a baby sized blanket; but then realized I have so many squares cut, might as well make a bigger one for milo. Plus its my first one, probably not going to be well done enough to give away anwyays. So i got all my fabric cut and laid out and you know what?….this hardly put a dent in my fabric stash! Doh! I used up alot of the smaller scrap pieces I had but I feel like i put back just as much as I took out. I think I see more quilts in my future.

Heres everything laid out and ready to sew!

I started sewing some squares and then rows together. I found that putting washi tape on my machine as a guide to keep a 1/4 inch seam allownance helps tremendously. Also when pinning the rows together, MAKE SURE to pin the seams. My seams arent perfect, but so much better now that I have been doing this.

Here is my progress after week 1! about eight more rows to go…Then Ill decide if I’m going to add more….

And as you can see here, the quilt is already a hit! More updates to come….

Remember when I made this rice bag plushie?
I made another one, but used stuffing this time!
I actually made two – i brought one to my friend’s baby in Japan and recently gave the one above to a friend’s daughter for her birthday. I love making these little guys!

The pattern is found in this book, which is still one of my all time favorite craft books! Its such a great way to use up fabric scraps!

Is your kid mine-craft obsessed like mine??! I dont know what hes more crazed about – watching the videos on you tube, or actually playing the game….I got this perfect sized box to fit right on my kiddos head, so we made a creeper out of it. We used masking tape and all our green shades of prismacolor markers to make it work. We taped off the squares, one by one, which worked as a good guide for milo to color in the squares evenly. We looked at a pattern online of the creeper so we would have an idea where the eyes would go. When we were finished we cut out squares in the eyes so he can see.

So I thought I was in the home stretch as I approach what I THOUGHT would be the last row of the blanket. The more I look at it, and the more I think about it, I’m going to just go for it and make it bigger. I’m planning one more row across down, and three more across. Which means I have about 50 more squares to make and a few more skeins of yarn to buy, since Im ran out of quite a few colors. I figure, if I’m going to do this, might as well DO this, am I right?! So I definitely have my work cut out for me, but this is such a fun project, I’m ok with it. Hopefully a few more weeks of work cut out for me, but photo sessions are starting to pick up, and we have some travel in our future, so we shall see….